Chapter 12: Terms Broken

After the captains left, I stayed in the hall until the lights went out row by row.

Fitz went home to sleep. Dominic didn't leave.

He sat on the top step outside the door with his elbows on his knees, as far from me as the doorway allowed.

I had told him not to follow me.

I hadn't told him to go.

I stood at the window of my father's old office and watched his shoulders in the dark.

For a week I had felt nothing, and now my whole body hurt with it.

I thought of his hands shaking over my wrist.

I thought of him on his knees in front of twenty-one men, crying, and of how it had not been enough, and how some part of me wished it had been more.

I opened the door.

He stood up so fast he nearly fell.

"Annie."

"Come inside."

He came in and shut the door behind him.

The office was small, with a desk, a couch against the wall, and one lamp that threw yellow light over his face.

"I want to say something," he said.

"No."

"You don't have to forgive me."

"I'm not going to." I locked the door. "I said you don't touch me until I say."

He went absolutely still.

"I'm saying it."

"Anneliese..."

"Touch me, Dominic."

He didn't move for the length of a breath.

Then he crossed the room, and his hands came up on either side of my face, and he kissed me.

It was not gentle.

I had been angry for seven days, and I kissed him back with all of it.

I bit his lower lip, and he groaned into my mouth.

His hands went into my hair and pulled my head back, and he kissed down my throat, hungry.

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